The present invention relates to electronic devices and accessories therefor, and more particularly, to peripheral modules for use with electronic devices, such as wireless handsets, personal digital assistants, gaming devices, and laptop computers.
Consumer electronics devices, such as laptop computers, notebook computers, pocket PCs, personal digital assistants (PDAs), gaming devices, and the like, now commonly possess wireless communications capabilities. For example, many laptop and notebook computers now incorporate radio communications circuitry configured to communicate with, for example, wireless local area (e.g., WiFi) networks. Devices, such as PDAs and laptops, may also be configured, e.g., through use of special-purpose cards, to communicate with public cellular (e.g., GSM or IS-95CDMA) networks. An example of a GSM-compatible wireless card for use with a laptop computer is the GC-82 cellular PC card produced by SonyEricsson Mobile Communications AB.
Some portable electronic devices now use mass storage devices to hold large amounts of data, such as video and music files. For example, some portable music players, such as the iPod®, include an internal hard disk drive (HDD), and a wireless phone with an HDD has been recently introduced by Samsung Electronics. Advanced mobile phones and other wireless devices (e.g., wireless PDAs) are increasingly incorporating significant digital media capabilities, e.g., digital still cameras, video recorders, audio recorders, etc., so it is likely that mass storage capability will become even more desirable. It is known to connectorize small HDDs, such as those used in portable music players, so that they can be removed and plugged into compatible connectors on other devices, e.g., a mass storage reader on a desktop or laptop computer. This can allow for transfer of data (e.g., MP3 files) to or from the HDD. This portability also can allow a user to migrate content between devices, e.g., between a portable music player and home stereo system.